Infosys Is Being Forced to Face a New Reality

Next week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be in India to co-chair the second U.S. India Strategic Dialogue. No one will be listening to that dialogue more intently than the executives at Infosys, the company that's being investigated by the State Department and other U.S. government agencies to determine whether it has engaged in criminal wrongdoing related to alleged visa fraud.

Last Friday, Robert O. Blake, Jr., the State Department's assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs, discussed the upcoming Strategic Dialogue in a live Web chat and took questions from Indian journalists. One of the journalists asked this question:

There are increasing reports of rejections of H-1B and L1 visas to Indians from Indian companies. Why is this happening? And will this be discussed during the dialogue?

Here's Blake's response:

I don't know if this will be discussed or not. I know this remains a high priority for Indians. Let me just say that we want to stress that India already is the overwhelmingly largest recipient of H-1B and L visas. It receives more than 40 percent of the total number of those visas that are issued worldwide. So I don't think we need to apologize for that and I'm a bit surprised to hear that there are large numbers of rejections because, again, India has been the largest beneficiary of this program and we think that, again, this has been something that's good for India and good for the United States.

How good it's been for the United States is debatable, of course, but what isn't open to question is the damage that's being done by visa fraud and abuse committed by some Indian companies, and by some U.S companies that use workers from India. So Clinton absolutely needs to raise the issue during the dialogue, and to reinforce what finally appears to be a steep decline in the U.S. government's tolerance for visa fraud and abuse.

That decline is juxtaposed against the steep ascent of the feds' aggressiveness in determining whether criminal charges should be filed against Infosys, and of Infosys' discomfort with that criminal investigation and with the civil suit filed by Infosys employee and whistleblower Jay Palmer.

That Infosys is feeling the heat is getting more obvious by the day. At a press conference in Bangalore on Saturday, K.V. Kamath, Infosys' incoming chairman, said this in response to a question about protectionism and visa rules:

Any country that does business in other countries needs to understand the laws of that country. You cannot use short cut methods to do business in other countries.

Anyone who thinks that would have been the response of a top Infosys executive six months ago, before Palmer filed his suit and triggered the feds' criminal investigation, is only fooling himself. Kamath, a veteran banker who in May was named to replace outgoing chairman Narayana Murthy when he steps down next month, has to deal with the fact that understanding-and following-the laws of the United States does not appear to have been a particularly high priority for Infosys over the years. What forced it to at least acknowledge those laws was the two-by-four-upside-the-head wake-up call it got when it realized it wasn't going to be able to make Palmer's allegations quietly go away.

We need jobs so that we can avoid a default on the National Debt. Default on that, gas will hit 20$/gallon, and a lot of Republican truckers are gonna lose work.

No country on this earth would allow companies to use the Visa system as their single source for workers, except the United States.

It is ridiculous for the U.S. to allow Infosys to have a U.S. workforce that is 90% from India, to continue to utilize visa. And use those Visa to remove millions of U.S. jobs.

Infosys can't find U.S. workers, because they are not even trying to. It is much easier, and far cheaper, to bring in worker on a B-1 visa, and pay them sub-minimum wage, and pay no U.S. taxes. And that B-1, H-1b, and L-1 worker is on a leash, they can't switch jobs. Basically, anyone who supports the Visa system as it currently stands, supports slavery, and that is completely immoral.

I've am talking with the DOJ in regards to another major player and planning a new complaint based on statutes I've just become aware of.

We are starting to educate ourselves and speak with the right people.

My strategy is shifting from a defensive posture (complaining about wrong doings) to more of an offensive posture in which remedies are sought and complaints are filed. Based on the Infosys case it's clear that we can force change through either the USCIS, DOL, DOJ, and if those avenues fail through the courts. The goal is of course to make violating the law unprofitable.

Even if we can't make it unprofitable, I'm confident that we can make it substantially less profitable. I'm ready to stop shadow boxing and land some punches.

Don IMHO your title and the content doesn't sit well. You may have disappointed neutral readers by writing this blog.

How could an up coming dialog from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is of that important for Infosys when it can't offer anything(good or bad) with any legal proceedings which is ongoing.

All they(Infosys) will be doing at this point is creating a strong legal panel to handle the case. Linking any US personnel visit to India with Infosys fraud case doesn't go well. There is always some visa fraud cases going on with some or the other department.

With this blog you had created impression (at least in me) of take every small opportunity to stress a point to your readers "See most Indian companies always does immigration fraud". And destroyed the trust that "Don Tennant" is always neutral towards origin of a company and he writes for/on a issue and doesn't take side.

Please forward any fraud information to the IRS, ask for (or claim) any reward in your forward. IRS probably has a whistleblowers website.

If InfoSys, and employ, or any company, is using the B-1 visa to bring in people to actually do work at a customer's site. InfoSys may be found to have committed tax fraud. As they deliberately broke the U.S. visa law, and in doing so, failed to pay United States taxes due by any employer who employs a worker in the United States.

Whether that worker is here legally or illegally, you must pay taxes due for that worker. A worker in the United States, illegally because of Visa fraud, is still a worker, and taxes must be paid.

The IRS will reward you handsomely, with a substantial part of the dollar value of the tax settlement. This could put you on easy street for the rest of your life.

Forward any information you may have to the IRS and copy the U.S. immigration service. And thanks in advance from workers all around the world, in helping to end human trafficking.

There is tonnes of info out there about the H1b abuse. But, not much will be done so no use in complaining, exposing yada yada yada.

Just today, I overheard an H1b employee offering training sessions for a fee. Now, this person is fully aware that he is only allowed to work for the employer that sponsored his H1b visa, and that moonlighting is not allowed. But, he does not care, cuz he knows he can get away with it. He makes extra money and does no tpay any taxes, too.

One more thing, I am pretty sure his trainees are other Indians :P

All I can do is bite my tongue, and cry inside about what has happened to this country

The IRS is extremely aggressive if they have evidence (or even suspicion) of tax evasion. (or even if you are just unlucky).

When the IRS will audit a contractor or waitress for 10k in suspected tax fraud, you know they will eagerly go after a corporation suspected of hundred of thousands of dollars, potentially millions of dollars worth of tax fraud.

The IRS doesn't operate by the same rules as U.S. immigration, the IRS is way more aggressive (because most IRS cases are civil cases, not criminal, the evidence gathering can be very invasive). The IRS can seize banks accounts and assets on a whim, and force companies to divulge financial information.

So go for it India_taati, you will be sorry if you don't, because IRS rewards can be total in the millions of U.S. dollars.

Agenda for Hilary's visit to India also has removal of NATO forces from Afghanistan and Pak-Af situation besides discussion on Indo-US high technology cooperation group. So it seems that this meeting has hardly anything to do with Palmer's case and has other very important things on plate. There are tons of companies and dozens of criminal lawsuit filed by and on these companies through out the world and for this reason seperate bodies are there to do the justice. So unlike as mentioned by the blogger that "No one will be listening to that dialogue more intently than the executives at Infosys", I feel that Infy executives would be the last one to listen this dialouge. -Cheers!

The problem is greater than just Infosys. There are spin off companies that are also doing business using the same tactics. I wouldn't be surprised if there is collusion between Infosys and its spin offs to hide details about shady visa dealings. The investigation needs to widen its umbrella. I am sure there are enough disgruntled employees willing to spill what they know.

Meanwhile, Infosys announced today that they will be hiring another 10,000 or so for this year and close to 45,000 for fiscal 2012, while Cisco has announced layoffs of close to 10,000. The bottom-line seems to be that Outsourcing companies are simply going about their business-as-usual, while technology companies are retrenching.

He is the proud citizen of America and now America is proud of him. He put his life (who lost his right hand in Afghanistan while shielding a live hand grenade from wounded comrades.) to save others, every person who are part of fraud and aware of fraud has to come forward and report it. Otherwise there is very less fraud will get exposed and it never gets over. Instead of spamming others blog and being a keyboard hero try to be real hero by exposing/reporting fraud.

IRS is not the problem, people like you are the problem who are clearly aware of fraud going on and decided to keep it under rug or biting his/her own tongue. If every fraud is reported by employees and if every resource working in client place is validated by the client then no company will dare to participate in any kind of visa fraud. Before complaining about government agencies make sure we have done our part.

Instead of crying fraud, fraud, fraud...better report it...need to know where to report it read below

Contact the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by telephone at (866) DHS-2-ICE. The hotline is designed specifically to accept immigration violation reports. Best part is you can complain anonymously.

Indian tatti is talking about some H1B address fraud, which I think is his ignorance. People are unnecessarily wasting their energy in letting him know the right path. Even if at all there exist any H1B fraud in companies like Infy then also I dont think developers with couple of yrs stay with Infy would be aware about that. silly guy!

Contact the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by telephone at (866) DHS-2-ICE. The hotline is designed specifically to accept immigration violation reports. Best part is you can complain anonymously.

"The new IRS Whistleblower statute gives anyone with information about large-scale tax underpayments, including accounting errors, tax fraud or evasion, a significant financial incentive to report it. The IRS must give you up to 30% of any money they collect based upon your information."

The IRS goes after big, small, and medium size tax fraud all the time.

Big guys, little guys, anyone. So don't be afraid to report the fraud.

What's wrong with the our country is that we are in debt 14 trillion and counting.

And we are allowing outsourcing companies to bring in sub-minimum wage workers using a government program, called the B-1 visa. B-1 is not a work visa, and it is illegal to bring someone in under this Visa to work at a job site.

And B-1 Visa can be used to commit tax fraud (really fraudulent shelter), because B-1 visa workers don't pay U.S. taxes.

Hey we spent a lot of money on wars (which we had to fight, and were forced on us). And we have a great infrastructure. We also have welfare and entitlements. This stuff is not cheap, but it keeps us healthy and safe.

That's the way we are, we care, certainly whether we need all these programs or not, is an open, debatable subject. Whether or not to pay your taxes, is not debatable, see Wesley Snipes, Willey Nelson, or Nicolas Cage if you have any questions.

Outsourcers are the new "Mob", the death threats and intimidation against Jay Palmer prove it. Al Capone went in on tax evasion, sometimes that's how they bring down the mob. It isn't pretty, but sometimes it's the only way.

Hi all. Why are we even discussing issues concerning our country with foreigners? Who the heck are these Indians...to come here and dictate terms to us? The whole lot of H1Bs and L1s and B1s are frauds and should be kicked out ASAP and the Jobs rightfully go to American Citizens. Over One MILLION Americans can get jobs within a month! Only if our President Acts on this. The other option is Picketing and hold Protests outside every damn building where these fraud guys work... till they get out of our country!

Infosys senior level meetings : We will dump 6 million Indians in US and capture their entire IT market and no American will ever come to know about this. We will throw these Americans out of their own country. They don't know what we are doing over here.

******

When Infosys files petition it uses fake resume. Employee works in different project (Client itself is different and had never worked on the technology.

So petition fake, resume fake.

But on Immigration or catching the guy right in office and force him to login to Infosys Intranet and then take a snap shot of the projects which he has worked (Profile displays that) and then match with petition. It will not match.

Even Jay Parmer and do that. he is manager and should have access to any employee project history. I will give you the name and address of the employee. Ask Jay Parmer to take a snap shot and match with petition from USICS.

I came across your spam in computerworld today....wow...you really doing nothing but copy pasting same information across all forums/blogs.

Since no one put effort to show you are wrong...I just took someone's (USgrad) response for you from computerworld so that readers of this forum understand more about your false statements...nothing is added by me...so don't kill the messenger...

Below text doesn't crashed this server yet....

Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired.

How many non indian ceo are fired.DO you track all those?Get a life.Also he was not fired.He was CEO for 5 years and board needed new direction.

AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009)

Wow this shows your ignorance.So AIG crashed not because of bad decisions of management but because it signed deal with Accenture.Please go and read about AIG fraud.It was not because of software failure.

AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot).

Was pilot sleeping when this happened?

What about crashes that happened in non AirBus planes.Those were not written by indian engineers.What about recent US airways issue that causes panic.

Apple - R&D CLOSED in India in 2006.

Agreed it was closed because they can find more skilled people in US locally.US has worlds best universities that attract best and brightest students around the globe.Also in India attrition rate.Major R&D of almost all companies are carried out in US because of quality PhD and Graduate students available here.

Australia's National Australia Bank Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010).

Please read why Bell lab lost it charm.It did because it lost talent to innovate not that it hired an Indian.Also it tried to focus on more profitable market segments and detracted from applied science research.Read wikipedia and read about Arun here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A....He has more than 80 patents and has founded several companies.Look at his qualifications and then realize you are a looser in life.

Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA)

Please read the story here why it was banned.HCL was a subcontractor for <25 % of the work

Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S.by Indian national guest worker)

Black sheep are every where do not stereotype.

Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead.Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America.

Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter.

This is great.Circuit city went bankrupt because it grew too fast without measuring waters.It opened numerous stores on debt (it was your tax money) and finally had to shut down as it couldnot compete with BB.It was not that it outsourced its software and that software sucked out the capital.Please come out of imaginary world you live in.I am sure you are some looser who doesnot know what he is talking about. Reply

ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S.airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int

What about floating point error by intel in 1975 ?What about Dallas baggage system >Software is complex business and mistakes do happen.It has nothing to do with who wrote the system.It is that it missed this loophole.I am sure you would not understand this as probably what you have learnt is to copy paste this doc from some word processing program.

Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution.

Dell - call center (closed in India)

Dell still has call centers in India and recruit a lot of people there.They did it to reduce cost.They have paid us customer service available why do not you try that.

Delta call centers (closed in India)

They did not close they stripped it down and mainly because of attrition.Get you facts.

Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out.Indian logic bomb creator found guilty.

GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later

GM failed because it could not compete with Toyota and Honda.It did not fail because of a software issue.it burnt >15 billion in cash because of unions.Read complete story of GM and then rant.BTW I am surprised at your ability of dragging all failure to software deals.Impressive.Now go out and get a real job

HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006)

Another joke and base less fact.

Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned)

Lot of Indians are employed in Intel R&D.USB and Pentium line are prime examples.Go check your facts.WHitefield was cancelled because AMD had better design then Intel and it did not make sense for them to go ahead in the process.And guess what few Foreigners (including Indians) were major stake holders in AMD's design.Still both companies are fighting for talent and both have significant amount of Foreigners in their R&D team.

Another joke.Get your facts corrected.Lehman failed because of bad debts and sub prime loans.I bet you would not know what these terms means.

Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma &wife in the U.S.

Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs.Stock used to be $100.Today it's lucky to be over $25.Not to mention that Vista thing.

This is new.Check you facts again and also invest some time figuring out facts rather than making out one.Microsoft employ lot of foreigners and even if you count all , it would be much less than 35000 you looser.Read facts here

MIT pulled out of the project because of differences not that Indians were incompetent.IF it were so they would not have even tried to open one in India.Many PhD students in MIT stem courses are foreigners.Check your facts again.But how will you know, you would have barely managed way out of high school. Reply

Do not get me going.Just google insider trading and you will see how many US

Qantas - See AirBus above

Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure)

Why Adobe has major development center in India if Indians are worthless.Check your facts again.Adobe has largest presence outside US in India and lot of R&D and development happens there.BTW current ceo of adobe is also an indian and well known in his domain.

"Hi all. Why are we even discussing issues concerning our country with foreigners? Who the heck are these Indians...to come here and dictate terms to us? The whole lot of H1Bs and L1s and B1s are frauds and should be kicked out ASAP and the Jobs rightfully go to American Citizens. Over One MILLION Americans can get jobs within a month! Only if our President Acts on this. The other option is Picketing and hold Protests outside every damn building where these fraud guys work... till they get out of our country! "
Title 8, Section 1182 INADMISSIBLE ALIENS says ALL foreign workers are illegal and cannot work in USA if Americans are unemployed. That makes ALL these foreign workers ILLEGAL ALIENS. Reply

"Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall)
Please read why Bell lab lost it charm.It did because it lost talent to innovate not that it hired an Indian.Also it tried to focus on more profitable market segments and detracted from applied science research.Read wikipedia and read about Arun here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A....He has more than 80 patents and has founded several companies.Look at his qualifications and then realize you are a looser in life."
Netravalli took over R&D at Bell Labs, laid all its Americans off and replaced them with cheap labor Indians. That's how it lost its "talent". The bottom line is Netravalli was running the place when it went down. He's responsible. Stop deflecting blame. I don't care how many patents he has, he couldn't run Bell Labs. And since I wrote software at Apple and Sony, including for Playstation, I hardly think you are in any position to be calling me a "looser" (I think you mean "loser"). What have you contributed to the world?" Reply

"ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S.airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int
What about floating point error by intel in 1975 ?What about Dallas baggage system Software is complex business and mistakes do happen.It has nothing to do with who wrote the system.
What floating point error would that be? Once upon a time the US airline system could NEVER have had a nationwide shutdown failure like this. EVER. Not until brilliant guest workers didn't know when to use a long int instead of a short int. LOL. Stop your delusions. Reply

"Lot of Indians are employed in Intel R&D.USB and Pentium line are prime examples.Go check your facts."
Ok, here's a fact: USB was created by a multi-consortium company, not by Intel. Do you even know where USB came from? Look it up.
"WHitefield was cancelled because AMD had better design then Intel and it did not make sense for them to go ahead in the process."
"Intel's Xeon chip kill is result of chaos in India
Server chief leaves India and Intel behind
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View
Posted in Servers , 28th October 2005 19:02 GMT
While stunning in its own right, Intel's cancellation this week of the multicore "Whitefield" processor stands as a more significant miscue that simply excising a chip from a roadmap. Whitfield's disappearance is a blow to India's growing IT endeavors." Reply

"Why Adobe has major development center in India if Indians are worthless.Check your facts again.Adobe has largest presence outside US in India and lot of R&D and development happens there.BTW current ceo of adobe is also an indian and well known in his domain."
I used to work at Adobe, you didn't. Adobe has an R&D center in India because its CEO is Indian and India desperately needs jobs, that's why.
Every single problem presented in the list is backed up by facts, not "baseless".
Stop the lies. Reply

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